Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but I love research. This love has fueled not only my doctoral degree and a career in university teaching, but also (after a bad breakup with academia) a career as a community journalist and public historian. But I wasn’t prepared for how much research lay before me when I started writing a memoir about my father.
A Place for What We Lose: A Daughter’s Return to Tule Lake tells the story of how I learned to grieve the untimely loss of my Japanese American father, initially by rereading Daruma, his unpublished wartime memoir, and eventually by traveling on a community pilgrimage to the Northern California site, Tule Lake, where he and his family were incarcerated. Tule Lake was the largest concentration camp site in the United States during World War II. My book includes, responds to, and even challenges portions of my father’s memoir. It’s ultimately a story of grieving and healing in community.